Who Lives in a house like this?

I’m not supposed to be here. I’ve popped home in my lunch hour because I have a doctor’s appointment. It doesn’t feel right, my house seems strange. For one, there are no kids around and for two: I shouldn’t be here. As I walked through the door I experienced a small surge of what can only be described as horror. So THIS is what my house would look like to a burglar! Or a snooper. Or an impromptu visitor with their own key. This is what greeted me as I let myself in…

In the porch is the baby’s trike and the big one’s scooter, strewn across the floor in a haphazard manner- left from last night’s quick dash around outside to tidy the garden after a full day’s play. Just inside the front door is the baby’s toothbrush, resting sadly on top of some important papers I was looking for this morning. A nice blue blob of toothpaste is now smeared across those papers, but at least I’ve found them! On the floor by the kitchen doorway there is a folded up receipt- from what, I don’t know.

Its the kitchen that really tells the tale of my family this morning. The family that had no time to tidy or take care. The family who all had somewhere they needed to be this morning. On the table sits the baby’s breakfast bowl, scraped clean of its weetabix and left with just a solitary, shining spoon resting inside. There is a damp t-towel, placed neatly over a sticky puddle of accidentally-split apple juice. Another puddle of sticky apple mess sits by the chair leg on the floor and a red cup is winking at me, saying: Look at me! I fell! I spilled! Ha ha, you can’t drink me now!
On the work surface sits half a banana, hiding in its skin; an empty tin of formula with its scoop by its side, faithful until the end, when they will be cruelly separated into different coloured recycling bins; the big one’s breaksfast bowl, with a puddle of chocolate milk circling the bottom and a missing spoon and, of course, the obligatory sprinkling of coffee granules.
Going up the stairs, there is a blob of weetabix cementing itself to the carpet, having lept free from the baby’s pyjamas/ face/ hands this morning. Now it is dying a slow death, waiting for the ulitmate end as cloth meets hot water meets Vanish spray.
Upstairs- I don’t want to talk about it. Washing, discarded clothes, books, toys. That’s upstairs.

This is what you see through MY keyhole, but only today. *sigh*

When I’m at home, I promise- I clean and I tidy. It takes but one morning to change my house, to betray my family’s existence. It takes but one morning. Who lives in a house like this? I do. *sigh, sigh and sigh again*

I having OCD can still relate to this, and take Anti Histhamines to prevent me getting Hives in such situations, i also wonder how my house can go from palace to pigsty, with the stroke of 5 kids and 30 seconds